Comments and Questions from Listening Session with Bruce

ATUS

We feel that being located in the Provost’s office is an odd fit since we serve all units. We seem to be an afterthought in big picture discussions.

We support both academic and administrative computing and technology. It would be helpful to have the CIO be more in the loop about technology discussions in the academic areas – hard in a partially decentralized computing environment.

People are concerned about their jobs and processes in the budget reductions.

Are there comparisons between Oregon problems in the 80s and what is happening here?

The corporate response to Techtonic has been stronger in this economy. Perhaps we can leverage our assets (ie: a large user) to get corporate participation in partnerships. High Tech companies feel that our technology footprint is very significant given our size. They love to hire our students – tend to work better than students from larger universities.

We recognize the need to update our website.

Employers appreciate the hands-on experience that our students get. Over 100 of our classrooms are mediated; 26 computer labs. All funded with capital funds. Need a consistent funding source for replacements and upgrades.

Software is also an candidate for needing ongoing funding. It is recharged across campus, which produces additional administrative cost.

Student technology fee is up for a vote this spring. ATUS usually writes proposals to point out needs.

The culture of teaching is slow to change – we all know lecture method doesn’t work so well. Course management system – blackboard could be more effective. Most of our transfer students have been engaged in distance learning and hybrid courses. We can be more creative.

We are leaders in advanced instrumentation/technology for virtual labs as well as real experiments in real time. We have received federal funds and are seeking more funding for the Integrated Laboratory Network (ILN). From the ILN website: ILN is “an initiative to integrate scientific instrumentation and supporting instructional material into the classroom, laboratory, and research environments through the use of web-based technologies. The objective of the ILN is to provide anytime/anyplace access to scientific instrumentation with the goal of providing new opportunities to engage in "mindful" scientific activities at all levels throughout the curriculum.”

We continue to attract young students. The opportunities to be selective and to improve diversity seem to be within our grasp.

We do a lot of training on the technology we have available. We need to ratchet it up – People who sell us this stuff don’t seem to have an appreciation for the market we create for them. We don’t tend to ask those companies for support and training. We just take the responsibility on ourselves to teach and to learn the software applications. We could dramatically improve capacity by asking for their help.

We won’t have the production space we have – this studio will go away with the remodel of Miller.

People are concerned about cutbacks. Some people have volunteered to cut back hours – better than losing a job – but it takes a long time to get back to full time when budgets come back. It would be good if the arrangements to be made were time delimited – providing a certain return to full appointment.

As parent of three daughters,– my goal is to get the last one, now at WWU, to graduate on time. What do we
say to parents about the budget scenarios?